I think people freak out over Ping because it has a lameness to it that people would have expected to originate from Microsoft or even Google -- but not from Apple.

Its entire approach is actually anti-social. It's not web-based, it's locked into iTunes and is meant for customers. Customers are busy buying, they want "Give it to me and let me go enjoy it now." They connect with other people on the Internet, outside of a commercial setting.

Apple's own support forums are more social even though the purpose is to solve customer problems. You don't need iTunes to use them.

This is the problem. iTunes may have been an acceptable interface five years ago but compared to the better "HTML5" web sites of today it feels slow, clunky, awkward and, most crucially, arbitrarily fenced in. Apple's challenge going forward will be to make interfaces that maintain their quality standards but with fuzzier boundaries with the rest of the web.